MLB announces the “Franchise Four” campaign, seeking the four “most impactful” players per franchise

Who are the four “most impactful” players in your franchise’s history? You’re about to find out. At least if you trust democracy to figure it out. From MLB:

Major League Baseball today announced the launch of the “Franchise Four” campaign, which will allow fans to vote for the most impactful players who best represent each Major League franchise and several other significant categories in the sport’s history. The winners of the month-long period of fan voting on MLB.com/FranchiseFour will be announced during pregame ceremonies before Baseball’s 86^th All-Star Game on Tuesday, July 14^th at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati on FOX.

I guess this is a formalized “Mount Rushmore” thing, which has become a fun bar conversation in recent years. The fun/annoying part of it is that you can define “impactful” or “important” in any number of ways. It doesn’t have to be the best players, but it could be. It doesn’t have to be the most historically significant, but it could be. Everyone who comes to the conversation is going to read in their own rules and provisos as they see fit. No one will agree. It will be chaos. Which is what makes if fun.

I’ll start with the two franchises I know best, the Tigers and the Braves. With almost zero reflection, I’ll go with:

Tigers: Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline and Willie Horton.

Braves: Hank Aaron, Warran Spahn, Dale Murphy and Chipper Jones.

Obviously you could pick ten other dudes for those slots, but that’s who I’d go with I guess. Go vote.